Should I escape to the country?

Marie-claire Chappet had been living the ‘good life’ during lockdown – and, like many Millennials, is now contemplating doing it for real...

‘Wouldn’t it be great if we lived in the countryside?’ my boyfriend, a village-raised, mountain-climbing sort, asks me on the regular. ‘I’d rather die,’ is the response from me, a lifelong Londoner. This year, we were planning on buying a flat in the capital. But 2020 had other ideas.

Now the housing market is yawning awake again, the rules of the game have changed. WFH is the norm, and looks like it may continue to be. So, what becomes of city-living if we are not compelled to live there by our 9-5? And if theatres, bars and restaurants look set to be a sociallydistanced melee of frayed nerves, what does that do to the soul of the place? London may be forever changed without its bustle.

If you can WFH, even partially, many people are radically rethinking where that home office could be. On 27 May, the UK property market recorded its busiest day ever, with Rightmove reporting a noticeable upturn in searches for rural regions.

‘If more of us are working from home full-time or part-time, a longer commute can make sense,’ says Grainne Gilmore, head of research at Zoopla. ‘Our data shows that the most searched-for rural area in recent weeks has been Monmouthshire in Wales. It is up 135.5%, is close to Cardiff, and is an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty.’

Rupert Sweeting, head of national country sales at Knight Frank, has also seen increased requests among Millennial buyers for ‘large villages and small towns with a community feel, decent pub and access to London’; while Rightmove’s biggest search surges have been even more secluded. Topping the list is Inverness in the Scottish Highlands, where searches are up 167%, followed by the Shetland Isles, up 131%.

My friends are part of this surge. One is renting a house in the Cotswolds for the summer, to test the rural waters. Another just extended her property search area to include Surrey. The rise of #cottagecore has facilitated this pastoral dreaming, no doubt. All lockdown we have seen a Millennial shift towards The Good Life, aided by sunny skies and our passion for baking banana bread. My Instagram has been flooded with images of those who fled back to parental enclaves and spent isolation making marmalade while the rest of us got urban cabin fever.

Staying at home these last few months has made all of us radically rethink what home actually means. For many urbanites like myself, it was a base from which I jetted across the city – from coffee shops to art galleries. That was my ‘good life’. But if we are forced to slow down and capitulate to the restrictions of this pandemic, the good life means space of your own, one that is comforting, that will sustain you in strife and that, yes, may come with green space, clean air and marmalade-making.